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ecomes a symbol. These range from uncanny bedtime stories to notions of monsters coming after one in the<br />
dark, to the dangers of somnambulism <strong>as</strong> well <strong>as</strong> the production of horror films themselves out of nightmare<br />
contents, respectively <strong>as</strong> an alternative to the latter.<br />
‘1, 2, Freddy’s coming for you’: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)<br />
A Nightmare on Elm Street (hereafter: Nightmare 1) is about a group of teenagers surrounding the main<br />
character Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) who are terrorized and slaughtered in their nightmares, by a killer<br />
later identified <strong>as</strong> Fred Krueger. Krueger, a paedophile child molester and murderer, h<strong>as</strong> been torched alive by<br />
a mob of enraged parents living on Elm Street 11 . Apparently, he managed to somehow live on in their children’s<br />
nightmares where he continues to terrorize them, also killing them in real life if he manages to do so in the<br />
teenagers’ nightmares. Nancy, who figures <strong>as</strong> the Final Girl 12 , becomes aware of Krueger’s p<strong>as</strong>t life <strong>as</strong> well <strong>as</strong> of<br />
his present dream world-existence and eventually manages to bring him out of her dream into the real world<br />
where she first fights him with booby traps she h<strong>as</strong> installed around the house, and then sets him on fire (once<br />
again). However, the picture’s open ending leaves it unclear whether Freddy is actually defeated or not, or if<br />
Nancy falls victim to him (or perhaps to madness), by presenting another dream sequence featuring Krueger’s<br />
return in the very end, after his supposed elimination by Nancy.<br />
The very beginning of Nightmare 1 is a sequence which is later revealed <strong>as</strong> a dream: After being ch<strong>as</strong>ed by<br />
Freddy through his characteristic boiler room (or rather hall), we see Tina (Amanda Wyss) wake up in her bed,<br />
sweaty and scared, behind her a shadow reminiscing the Gothic horror of German expressionism, which will be<br />
referenced again in New Nightmare, when Freddy’s razor-blade glove c<strong>as</strong>ts a long-fingered shadow similar to<br />
Graf Orlok’s in Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror . 13 Tina’s mother enters to check on her daughter but fails to be<br />
of any <strong>as</strong>sistance, instead pointing out that Tina’s nightdress displays four slits across the stomach. However,<br />
Tina’s mother instructs her to ‘either cut your fingernails or [...] stop that kind o’dreaming’ (00:04),<br />
immediately finding a rational explanation for the slit nightdress, namely her daughter clawing herself in her<br />
sleep. After her mother leaves, we see Tina somewhat superstitiously grabbing the crucifix from the wall and<br />
lying down again. She thus follows the advice given in a verse from the nursery rhyme accompanying Freddy<br />
Krueger: ‘5, 6, grab your crucifix,’ which we subsequently hear when Tina’s bedroom cross-fades into the<br />
characteristic white-clad girls skipping rope.<br />
The second attack on Tina also occurs in a bed, but <strong>this</strong> time she and her boyfriend Rod sleep in her mother’s<br />
bedroom when she is out of the house overnight. After having had intercourse and fallen <strong>as</strong>leep, the girl awakes<br />
from the sound of pebbles being tossed against the bedroom window, and gets up to look out. In the following<br />
sequence, she goes out into the garden and onto the street where she finally meets Krueger. Ch<strong>as</strong>ed by him, she<br />
makes her way back to the house, and the two of them cr<strong>as</strong>h on a garden table when he attacks her right before<br />
she can enter the house. Then suddenly, we see Tina wrestling with her bed sheets from her bed that serve <strong>as</strong><br />
mediators between <strong>this</strong> scene (which is only revealed <strong>as</strong> Tina’s dream when Freddy appears) and reality. As we<br />
now see Rod waking up in the bed next to her, Tina screams and kicks in her sleep, struggling with Krueger<br />
under the sheets, who is visible only in Tina’s nightmare but invisible to Rod when he jumps out of the bed and<br />
16